Archaeology in Pakistan: A Colonial Past and an Uncertain Future Hadiqa Khan MPhil Archaeology, University of Oxford History of Archaeology

• Like most modern disciplines, born from a colonial past • Problems with ‘internalism’ in historiography • ‘External’ historiographies emerging from the 1980s Beginnings of Archaeology in India

• Early European travellers and voyagers • Asiatic Society established in 1784 • Archaeological Survey of India established in 1861 Colonial framing of the ‘Indian Civilization’

• Unchanging and despotic • ‘Oriental Despotism’ • ‘Spiritual’ The Indus Valley Civilization

• First proper systematic survey carried out by John Marshall in 1922 and 1923 • Excavations continued under the leadership of Mortimer Wheeler John Marshall

• Director of ASI from 1902-1928 • Initially did not believe that IVC had its origins in India • Alongside Gordon Childe, described the IVC almost as a ‘utopia’ • Published first photographs of the IVC in The Illustrated London News in 1925 Mortimer Wheeler

• Director of ASI from 1944-1948 • Took issue with previous leadership • Established school in Taxila for Indian archaeologists • Still held problematic views about Indians and their intellectual capacity Continued…

• “even when leisure can be snatched from these domestic embarrassments, the necessary literary apparatus is more often than not beyond the reach of the Indian scholar … For many reasons, the path of learning in modern India and Pakistan is not an easy one. It is a hard enough road for the keen and exceptional mind; for the second-raters, upon whom the scholarship depends on most of its honesty and necessary foot-slogging, it becomes an impassable tangle of conflicting urges and interests” (Wheeler 1958: 197). Continued…

• One of Wheeler’s most influential theories regarding the IVC was that of the ‘Aryan Invasion’, which he based on a group of skeletons found in Mohenjo-Daro and his interpretations of hymns from the Rigveda • “in these hymns [from the Rigveda] the invasion constantly assumes the form of an onslaught upon the walled cities of the aborigines, and the only fortifications of approximate date known to us are those of the citadels of Harappa and Mohenjodaro and at certain of the smaller contemporary towns … it is not indeed impossible that the name of Harappa itself is concealed in the Hari-Yupiya which is mentioned in the Rigveda as the scene of a battle about this time” (Wheeler 1968: 113). • This theory remains popular with right-wing groups in India to this day The Indus Valley Civilization and Pakistan

• Attempts to either relate the IVC to Pakistani culture or Islam, or to distance Pakistan from it because it does not relate to its culture or religion “This evening, the entire world will be sent a message that we are capable of taking care of our own heritage,” – Saqib Ahmed Soomro, secretary of the Sindh government’s Culture Department.